


Embedded

by Square Pudding (Square_Pudding)



Series: Observer Effect [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Actual Garbage Child, Adoption, Angelic Lore, Christmas Fluff, Christmas Presents, Domestic Fluff, Epistolary, Fluff, Found Family, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Living Together, M/M, Marriage, Mom and dad saw your fanart, POV Outsider, Post-Canon, Reader-Interactive, Retirement, Shipper on Deck, South Downs Cottage (Good Omens), Tiny side Gabriel/Beelzebub, Tired: Character x Reader, Wired: Character adopts Reader and feeds them, soft domesticity
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-10-05 09:57:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20487023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Square_Pudding/pseuds/Square%20Pudding
Summary: The Apocalypse has been averted. Aziraphale and Crowley's treason remains a political embarrassment for both Heaven and Hell. Now, in 2036, the pair have mysteriously vanished from London, leaving only a forwarding address to a desolate patch of hillside on England's southern coast.It's up to Aziraphale and Crowley's number one fan and unauthorized biographer to track them down again -- if the Grigori doesn't get sacked and discorporated first.





	1. Aziraphale and Crowley's Home for Wayward Supernatural Beings

**Author's Note:**

> I was really surprised by the positive response to the narrator character in [my last Good Omens fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20155537), and more than a few readers suggested I bring them back for a follow-up, so I'm giving it a shot!
> 
> The format is a little different this time. This will be an ongoing slice-of-life style fic, with each chapter detailing the POV character's experience living alongside A&C, told as a series of blog posts (with other media thrown in for flavor, as you'll see). If you leave a comment addressed to Rezathaniel, it will be answered in the next chapter, and suggestions may be worked into future story arcs. Because sometimes we all just want to live vicariously through the adopted garbage child of History's Greatest Couple.
> 
> Many thanks to Doxy for the beta!

**To:** Gabriel  
**From:** Michael  
**CC:** Sandalphon, Uriel, Raguel [+5 others]  
**Sent:** 31 March, 2021 07:44 AM UTC  
**Subject: Rezathaniel**

Dear All,

I understand these last few years have been very stressful for everyone. However, I believe it is past time we address the issue of the Grigori, Rezathaniel.

As you will recall, Rezathaniel was assigned to monitor Aziraphale, Principality, Angel of the Eastern Gate, beginning in 33 AD. I’ve reviewed the logs entered into the Observation Files and it seems clear to me that Rezathaniel was aware of Aziraphale’s flagrant policy violations as early as 820 AD, and yet did nothing to report these violations to head office.

With all due respect to the Almighty, I contend that had we known earlier of Aziraphale’s misconduct, the events of August 2019 would not have transpired as they did. It is my view that Rezathaniel should be regarded as an accomplice to Aziraphale’s crimes and summarily punished at our earliest convenience.

Sincerely,

Archangel Michael

**To:** Michael  
**From:** Uriel  
**CC:** Sandalphon, Raguel, Gabriel [+5 others]  
**Sent: ** 31 March, 2021 07:47 AM UTC  
**Subject: Re: Rezathaniel**

Greetings All,

I am in favor of Michael’s proposal. However, I should note there is a slight wrinkle: the Grigori known as Rezathaniel is not currently in Heaven.

Best,

Uriel

Archangel, Wisdom

**To:** Uriel  
**From:** Sandalphon  
**CC:** Michael, Raguel, Gabriel [+5 others]  
**Sent:** 31 March, 2021 07:53 AM UTC  
**Subject: Re: Re: Rezathaniel**

Grigories. Shouldve drowned em all with the Nephilim back in 3004 BC.

Set me on that traitor. I’ll bring em back in no time.

**To:** Sandalphon  
**From:** Gabriel  
**CC:** Uriel, Michael, Raguel [+5 others]  
**Sent:** 31 March, 2021 07:59 AM UTC  
**Subject: Re: Re: Re: Rezathaniel**

Hey everyone,

That’s a negative, Sandalphon. The situation with Earth is still extremely delicate. Plus, if Rezathaniel’s gone to ground they’ve almost certainly made contact with Aziraphale and his pet demon. IE, not a force we can reckon with at this time.

I move to declare Rezathaniel Fallen in absentia. Let the Downstairs folks sort it out.

Gabriel

Sent from my iTome

**To:** Gabriel  
**From:** Michael  
**CC:** Sandalphon, Uriel, Raguel [+5 others]  
**Sent:** 31 March, 2021 08:01 AM UTC  
**Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Rezathaniel**

Dear All,

I have no objections to Gabriel’s proposal.

Sincerely,

Archangel Michael

**To:** Michael  
**From:** Uriel  
**CC:** Gabriel, Sandalphon, Raguel [+5 others]  
**Sent:** 31 March, 2021 08:03 AM UTC  
**Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Rezathaniel**

Greetings All,

I also vote in favor of Fallen in absentia. It seems the tidiest solution.

Raguel, you are Rezathaniel’s reporting archangel. We would like to know your thoughts.

Best,

Uriel

Archangel, Wisdom

**To:** Uriel  
**From: ** Raguel  
**CC:** Michael, Gabriel, Sandalphon [+5 others]  
**Sent:** 31 March, 2021 11:19 PM UTC  
**Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Rezathaniel**

Everyone,

Apologies, just saw this thread.

Rezathaniel has always been an upstanding Grigori with a flawless record of performance, so as you can imagine, the events of August 2019 have been exceptionally difficult for me. It is one thing to discover an angel under your command has gone rogue; it is very much another to learn they have _ been _ rogue for 800-1,200 years. Like Michael, I am devastated and still reeling from this turn of events.

I see no option but to join with the leading opinion here and vote to declare Rezathaniel Fallen in absentia. May God have mercy.

Best,

Archangel Raguel

~~~~~~~~~~~~*~*~*~~~~~~~~~~~~

“You can’t have a war without War.”

\--Archangel Sandalphon

~~~~~~~~~~~~*~*~*~~~~~~~~~~~~

**To:** Raguel  
**From:** Gabriel  
**CC:** Michael, Uriel, Sandalphon [+5 others]  
**Sent:** 1 April, 2021 06:31 AM UTC  
**Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Rezathaniel**

I don’t think the Almighty’s been CC’d, has She?

  
Sent from my iTome

**To: ** Gabriel  
**From: ** Michael  
**CC:** Raguel, Uriel, Sandalphon [+5 others]  
**Sent: ** 1 April, 2021 06:49 AM UTC  
**Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Rezathaniel**

No, I haven’t included Her in this thread. I’m sure that losing Aziraphale was already enough of a blow.

Besides… I would hate for the rest of the Grigori to be punished for the actions of just one of their number. They are Flawed, closer to humans than the other orders of angels, and more easily given to Temptation. But that is precisely why we must nurture them and shield them from the impurities of humanity. No one wants to see another Great Flood.

Sincerely,

Archangel Michael

**To:** Michael  
**From:** Sandalphon  
**CC:** Gabriel, Raguel, Uriel [+5 others]  
**Sent:** 1 April, 2021 06:51 AM UTC  
**Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Rezathaniel**

I do

**To:** Sandalphon  
**From:** Gabriel  
**CC:** Michael, Raguel, Uriel [+5 others]  
**Sent:** 1 April, 2021 06:56 AM UTC  
**Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Rezathaniel**

We know you do, Sandalphon.

Sent from my iTome

**To:** Gabriel  
**From:** Raphael  
**CC:** Sandalphon, Michael, Raguel [+5 others]  
**Sent:** 13 September, 2036 11:56 AM UTC  
**Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Rezathaniel**

Hey guys, sorry about that, was off fiddling with some black holes. We still taking votes on this?

Raph

**To:** Raphael  
**From:** Gabriel  
**CC:** Sandalphon, Michael, Raguel [+5 others]  
**Sent: ** 14 September, 2036 00:01 AM UTC  
**Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Rezathaniel**

For Heaven’s sake, Raphael.

Sent from my iTome

* * *

**Log Entry #1  
** **Date: 17 September, 2036 AD**

Moving blog spaces again. Same old business: server went down, domain got sold, humans running it died, etc. It’s gonna take me a bit to backfill the archives, so in the meantime, let’s tackle some ~~reader questions~~

JK there aren’t any. But to all three of you who’ve clicked over from my aesthetics Insta, welcome! I basically use this space to blather about my life as a celestial being/artist and keep tabs on History’s Greatest Couple, because I got tired of sending news tips to entertainment sites and being told to knock it off. _ Apparently_, averting the Apocalypse isn’t enough to qualify you as a celebrity these days. Your loss, humans.

Anyway, life stuff:

Been feeling rather rubbish of late, the whole blog move aside. Not sure what it is; seasonal cold, perhaps. Got to stop rummaging around in bins out back behind the chip shop, me.

It’s not like I even need it, I just can’t seem to help myself. 2,000 years on this rock and I’ve only recently discovered my corporeal form has tastebuds. I used to think Aziraphale was doing it all as an elaborate pantomime but no, human food is _ fascinating_, especially when it’s a little bit slimy.

Got to be more careful about it, at any rate. Been picked up by police three times now, asking me where I’d run off from, did my parents know where I was, did I have someone who could come and collect me, etc.

Bit funny, innit, how you can have the same face for millennia and humans’ll have a different read on it every time? You run round with a camera in 1940s Morocco and everyone just thinks you’re one more enterprising young fella but now it’s all truancy officers and liquor store clerks giving you funny looks like you should be off studying for your GCSEs. I’ve tried growing a bit of facial hair but it just didn’t take.

Still nothing on the A&C front. They’ve left London, I can confirm that at least. Just can’t pick up their trail anywhere. I swear, you turn your back _ one _ minute to do a gallery opening in Germany and when you come back, England’s only permanent occult and ethereal residents have absconded to parts unknown. Best lead I’ve got is a forwarding address Aziraphale left for some place in South Downs, but I’ve been up and down that section of coast 20+ times and there’s nothing but chalk.

ATM I’m back in London to see whether I can get a lead from Crowley’s old landlady. But as far as she’s concerned his flat’s been rented to the same Russian oligarch for the past 50 years. It’s mad.

_ Fuck me _ but my body hurts. Just an all-over ache, almost a burning feeling. Tried googling symptoms till I remembered that was one of Crowley’s ideas. Also tried dematerializing for a bit but that made the pain even _ worse_. Think I’m gonna pack it in for the day and and try sleeping this oASDGHBDASJH:AHS<KDAJLL;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

\-------------------------------------------------

POST CORRUPTED

\-------------------------------------------------

* * *

**Metropolitan Police**

**@metropoliceuk**

Officers on scene after reported hit and run at the corner of Grosvenor and Davies at 10:31hrs. One individual in life-threatening condition. No arrests. Witnesses asked to call 101 and quote CAD119428/17Sept with any information.

_ 10:59 AM - 17 Sept, 2036 - Plurkdeck_

* * *

> _Thank you for contacting Limbo Services, Inc, your officially licensed provider for soul assessment and allocation. Please note all calls may be monitored or recorded. _
> 
> **Client:** Hello? Hello?
> 
> **Agent4711:** Thank you for holding. My name is Sera. How may I help you today?
> 
> **Client:** I think there’s been some kind of mistake.
> 
> **Agent4711: **May I have your name, karmic score, and date of conception, please?
> 
> **Client:** What? Erm. I don’t think I have any of that. My name’s Rezathaniel. I’m a Grigori. I was on Earth when I was walking across a street in Mayfair and--
> 
> **Agent4711:** Oh, I’m afraid you have the wrong department.
> 
> **Client: **Oh, thank God.
> 
> **Agent4711:** This is mortal souls allocation only. You’ll need to check in with your head office to report a discorporation. Would you like me to transfer you?
> 
> **Client:** Yes, please. Thank you so much.
> 
> **Agent4711:** Downstairs or Upstairs, love?
> 
> **Client:** Upstairs. Thank you.
> 
> [...]
> 
> **Agent4711:** Hmmm. Can’t seem to connect you.
> 
> **Client:** What?
> 
> **Agent4711:** I’m dialing the extension, but every time I send the request it shoots back an error. Could you spell your name for me, please?
> 
> **Client:** It’s r̴̠̳̗͙̻͈͔͊̑̋̅̇͑͢-̵̨̨͔̪̥͍͋̾̕͢͞͠͞è͚̣͈̺̗͈̈̅̎́̽̚̚-̶̛̻̻̯̤̜̭̗̪̄̒͋̿͑̚͟͠z̶̨̛̬̪̼̜̒̎͐̒̔͊͟͝͞-̝͎̣͔͓̩͈̖̙̃͋͋̌̆ͅa̴̛̙̻̭͉̤͕̽̓̃̍̎̃̂͘-̢̧̢͔̥̲͇̤̮͌̆̓̓͊͌̈́͘̕͟͡t̟͚͍̳͎̼̫̉͋̓̂͑̍͝-̵͖̝͕̟̣͈̼̖̟̩̽̈́͊̈̌̉ḧ̨̰̲͈̠͖̯́͋͌̊̒͘͠-̡̡̛̣͓̳̻͗͂̈͒̔̌͋͒̄͜ͅǎ̷̢̡̮̬̝̲̭̥̪̃͋̌̒-̴̠̦̗̮̩͈̱͋͊͋́̋̿̕͘͘͢͟͟n̨̺̼̯̘̆͆́̉̀̿̎̕͢͟͞-̛̺̺̘͇̦̿̏̓͘̚ͅi̵̢̢̠̳̳̠̻̓̓͊̍̇͞-̢͚̠̣̥̟̬̗̍̾̇̆͌̊͗̈́ẽ̢̡̢̬̗̗̜͒͊͊̆̈́͊̿-̺̯͇͉̗̎͗͆̈́̋̅̎̔͟͝͡l̸̳̰̲̦̙͖̪̯̈̂̊̆́̃̕͞ͅ
> 
> **Agent4711:** Thank you. One moment.
> 
> [...]
> 
> **Agent4711:** Huh.
> 
> **Client:** What is it?
> 
> **Agent4711:** Funny, I’ve just never seen a message like this before… Didn’t think this sort of thing still happened… 
> 
> **Client:** Can you please just tell me what the problem is.
> 
> **Agent4711:** It says you’re... deactivated?
> 
> **Client:** I -- _ what? _
> 
> **Agent4711:** Shall I transfer you to the Downstairs office instead?
> 
> **Client:** No, no, please don’t. This has to be a mistake.
> 
> **Agent4711:** I’m afraid it’s one or the other, love.
> 
> **Client:** But I’m not a demon! I mean, I might’ve goofed off on the job here and there, but I’m on a very important assignment -- er, more of a personal project, I guess--
> 
> **Agent4711:** I’m sorry, I just don’t think there’s anything I’m able to do. Downstairs would be your best bet for getting this sorted.
> 
> **Client:** No, no, no, no, please don’t--
> 
> **Agent4711:** Before I transfer you, might I ask you to rate your call with us today on a scale of one to five?
> 
> **Client:** _Fuck!_
> 
> **Agent4711:** I’ll mark that down as a five, shall I?

* * *

**To:** Gabriel  
**From:** Beelzebub  
**Sent:** 17 September, 2036 10:33 AM UTC  
**Subject: What the hell arsehole**

You can’t just send your rejects down here without consulting us. There’s no place to put them! I’m already up to my antennae with the last bunch of human-diddlers your lot cast down 5000 years ago.

**To:** Beelzebub  
**From:** Gabriel  
**Sent:** 17 September, 2036 10:35 AM UTC  
**Subject: Re: What the hell arsehole**

‘Fraid this one’s above me, Beez.

But hey, have you seen the kid’s file yet? If anything you should be _ thanking _ me for sending this one over to you. <3

Sent from my iTome

**To:** Gabriel  
**From:** Beelzebub  
**Sent:** 17 September, 2036 10:36 AM UTC  
**Subject: Re: Re: What the hell arsehole**

Get that stupid heart out of my inbox. 

We go round torturing some accomplice of Crowley’s and all I’ll hear is demons asking why haven’t we gone after the real fucker yet.

**To:** Beelzebub  
**From:** Gabriel  
**Sent:** 17 September, 2036 10:38 AM UTC  
**Subject: Re: Re: Re: What the hell arsehole**

Well, they’re not coming back up here. Keep them in the Pit for a few millennia and then have a two-for-one, I don’t care.

Sent from my iTome

**To:** Gabriel  
**From:** Beelzebub  
**Sent:** 17 September, 2036 10:41 AM UTC  
**Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: What the hell arsehole**

Oh no. How dreadful. Seems they escaped.

**To:** Beelzebub  
**From:** Gabriel  
**Sent:** 17 September, 2036 10:42 AM UTC  
**Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What the hell arsehole**

They WHAT

Sent from my iTome

**To:** Gabriel  
**From:** Beelzebub  
**Sent:** 17 September, 2036 10:43 AM UTC  
**Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What the hell arsehole**

Ran right back out the door, they did. Gosh. How could this have happened.

**To:** Gabriel  
**From:** Beelzebub  
**Sent:** 17 September, 2036 10:44 AM UTC  
**Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What the hell arsehole**

BEEZ

Sent from my iTome

* * *

> **Ambu-lessⓇ Central London Discount Emergency Transportation Services  
** **Incident Report - Excerpt - Audio Transcription  
** **Unit #218  
**17 September, 2036, 10:39hrs
> 
> **Contractor #8739:** I’ve got a pulse.
> 
> **Contractor #7001:** What?
> 
> **Contractor #8739:** I need oxygen. Keep pressure on the site.
> 
> **Contractor #7001:** Good lord -- I’ve got eye movement. Hello, hello, mate? If you can hear me, just lie very still, all right? You’re badly hurt, you’re in an ambulance. We’re taking you to hospital.
> 
> **Contractor #8739:** Easy there, just breathe. Can you breathe for me, love? Nice and slow. That’s it.
> 
> **Contractor #7001:** Survivor, this one. Must have a guardian angel watching over ‘em.

* * *

**Log Entry #2  
** **Date: 17 September, 2036**

Hey all. Sry for not checking in sooner. Had a bit of an accident this morning.

Good news is I’m breathing fine. Can move fingers and everything. Lorry smashed my camera but this thing still works at least. Used to judge ppl so much for cracked screens…

More soon.

**Log Entry #3  
** **Date: 18 September, 2036**

Doctor came round again, keeps asking for # of my parents. Tried explaining I’m an immortal who predates the concept of linear time but she didn’t seem to get it. Lol

**Log Entry #4  
** **Date: 19 September, 2036**

Police coming round now.

“Child Protective Services” -- I’m not a child ffs. I look 17 at worst. Not my fault the human definition of adulthood keeps changing. 

Cameras. I’d never have bothered with this stupid physical body business if humans hadn’t gone and invented cameras.

**Log Entry #5  
** **Date: 20 September, 2036**

Police humans gave me an ultimatum. Number of a parent or guardian or they’re discharging me to some sort of home thing.

Seemed like a bother so I tried giving them the number of one of my local human friends. Only I couldn’t remember any off-hand, so I gave them the only number I remembered, just by dint of seeing Aziraphale dial it so many times.

Didn’t expect anything. Really, I didn’t. Figured he’d have changed it by now, or blocked unknown numbers, or whatever. Didn’t expect him to _ pick up_.

ADDENDUM:

Thought I had seen Crowley angry before, turns out that was him being merely annoyed. When Crowley is angry, the air ripples around the edge of his corporeal form like the surface of a hot frying pan.

Hair’s looking good though. Gone back to a long style. Suits him.

He said, “Right, I’m the brother. Uncle or something. Cousin. ‘Spose that one’s technically accurate.” He snapped his fingers every time they tried bringing him a form to sign. Police asked for identification and he snapped his fingers at them too. Then he grabbed me by the arm and I swear my skin sizzled as he hauled me out of bed. “Up you get, _ cousin_.”

My legs were in too many pieces to walk, so he fixed those. Grudgingly. The rest of my fractures he left as they were. I raced after him as he stormed out into the hallway.

“Tell me you professional voyeurs at least have the ability to clothe yourselves,” he said, without turning his head.

“What?” I asked, feeling several minutes behind on this conversation. I’m writing all this up after the fact, so it’s not verbatim etc etc.

Crowley gestured over his shoulder at my hospital gown. “_Clothes_. I’m not walking out of here with your arse out in the wind.”

“Oh. Right.”

I only had one usable hand, so I stuck my phone between my teeth and pulled down the raw firmament to recreate approximately what I had been wearing before the accident. Heaven expects you to buy earthly garments, not miracle them, but I reckon my original clothes would be in no state to wear even if I did go back for them. Also I’m not totally sure I count as heavenly anymore.

“Thank you,” I said, when the phone was out of my mouth again. Even in trainers, I was practically jogging just to keep up with him. “Listen, I’m sorry to drag you all the way out here, honest I am.” I hadn’t caught where he was coming from but it was supposed to be two hours away, even though he’d arrived in half of that. “I just didn’t know any other numbers to give. If I’d known how to reach Aziraphale, I would--”

“_Do not _ say his name. None of your lot have earned the right, but especially _ not you_.” Crowley pinched the bridge of his nose, as though he were experiencing a headache. “Unbelievable. The pair on you -- not that you’ve actually got any, I expect -- calling up a bloody _ demon _ to get you out of hospital. I can’t tell if you’re arrogant or just so blitheringly stupid you’d stick your own head inside a woodchipper.”

Despite everything, I found myself smiling at Crowley’s back.

“But I know you,” I said. “I’ve seen how you are around people. Around Az -- erm, your friend. I know you’re not like other demons.”

“Met many, have you?”

“The number’s gone up a bit recently.”

My answer rolled off him as though I hadn’t spoken at all. He geared up to say something, to continue his invective or lecture or whatever you want to call it, when a hospital staff human shouted after us.

“Sir. Sir!” she called. She seemed to be built entirely of scorched nerves. Even her hair was upset. “There’s still the matter of the bill--”

“Bill? What happened to the good old NHS?” Crowley growled, rolling back his shoulders. “Humans. Never had a good idea they didn’t manage to ruin.”

“Erm,” I said. “To be fair, I’m not a citizen--”

Crowley snapped his fingers. As I watched, the hospital staff human slowed to a halt, her eyes glazing over.

“Our bill’s been paid,” he said. The human nodded slowly, a shallow bob of her head. “Matter of fact, everyone’s bill’s been paid. Go clock out early tonight, spend some time with the kids.”

He snapped again and the human shuffled off, a vague, serene look on her face. Judging by her walk, he’d cured her hip pain as well.

I beamed at Crowley.

“Shut it,” he warned, even though I hadn’t opened my mouth.

He pushed through the emergency exit and I followed, feeling like a duckling trailing after its parent. Outside, Crowley’s car was parked precisely and extremely illegally at the curb.

“There. You’re free. One demonic rescue accomplished,” he said. “Now go home.”

“Er, that’s just the thing,” I began.

Crowley opened the driver side door and leaned on it. “Please. If you start trying to tell me this was some elaborate plan to track me down--”

“Oh,” I said, the thought occurring to me for the first time. “That would’ve been clever, wouldn’t it?”

Crowley let out a long, low hiss. He started ducking his head into the car.

“Not to tell you your business,” he said, “but if I were you, I’d head back Upstairs and beg my arse off for a new assignment. Preferably something idiot-proof, like watching over tadpoles or algae.”

“That’s the problem, I--”

“_Go home_, kid.”

“But I can’t,” I burst out. Crowley froze halfway to shutting his driver side door. “I can’t go back. I think I’m… I think I might’ve Fallen.”

The explanation fell out of me all at once, chaotic and half-incoherent and, honestly, more emotional than I would’ve liked. Crowley’s gaze stayed fixed on me the entire time I spoke, his mouth creased into its usual hard-to-read frown.

When I ran out of words, he sighed and fished his phone out of his pocket.

There was only one individual he could’ve been calling. “It’s me,” he said into the receiver, when the person picked up after the third ring.

Grigori are rather useless, as angels go. We can’t do blessings, we can barely perform miracles. We’re not especially intelligent or brave. We’re only good at two things, really: watching and listening.

So I watched Crowley hold the phone to his ear, a coiled silver ring on his finger that I hadn’t seen before glinting under the lamplight. And I heard the voice on the other end, even though it wasn’t on speaker.

“Heavens, my dear, are you all right?” Aziraphale asked. “You took off so suddenly.”

“Yeah, m’in London right now,” Crowley muttered. He glanced at me over the tops of his glasses and I got a hint of that sulfuric yellow he so rarely shows anyone. “Friend got into a spot of trouble.

“Listen,” he continued. “I’m about an hour away, but I need to talk sooner than that, and it can’t be over the phone. Can I meet you halfway somewhere? Er, what’s between here and there that isn’t farmland--?”

“Crawley?”

“Yes?”

“I mean the _ town_, dear. They’ve got that charming little Lebanese place,” Aziraphale said. “You remember, the one with those wonderful little--”

“Spinach pies, yeah. Okay, it’s--” Crowley checked his watch, the flash prototype thing he’d started wearing in 2008, with all the exposed bands and gears. “--gone past seven now. Should take me about thirty minutes to get there. See you then?”

“Well, I don’t know. You’re rather more of a speed demon than me, Crowley, but I’ll try my best.”

“Use a miracle if you have to.” Crowley’s tone bordered on a whinge. “It’s only one county over.”

Aziraphale sighed, sounding put-upon, but he didn’t offer a lecture like he might have 30 years ago. “I’ll get us a table for three, then, shall I?”

“Ngk.” Crowley shifted in the driver's seat. “I didn’t say anything about--”

“Really, my love, of _ course _ you’re bringing someone,” Aziraphale said, so matter-of-fact that I felt the skin on the back of my neck prickle, as though he were somehow watching me even through the phone. “You wouldn’t pop off to London in the middle of the afternoon and then ring me saying _ ‘we have to talk’ _ in that dreadfully serious way of yours unless this friend had something to do with both of us. Ask them if they prefer red or white.”

“Just a pint for me, thanks,” I answered without thinking. Crowley’s glare was so sharp it felt a bit like getting my throat slit.

**Log Entry #6  
** **Date: 21 September, 2036**

Just picking things up from the last entry. Would’ve logged a lot of this earlier, but _ you _ try typing on your phone in the back seat of a demon’s car whilst going 110mph down the A23.

OK, so. Dinner.

On the drive down to <strike>Crowley</strike> Crawley, <strike>Crawley</strike> Crowley tried to put on some Handel or Tchaikovsky or whoever it is he’s always snobbing about, but all the streaming station algorithms kept suggesting Queen music. He switched it off. “Right,” he said. “Some ground rules.”

“Hang on,” I said, because apparently I just really felt like getting myself vehicularly murdered twice this week. “You mind if I record this?”

“Recor-- _ Of course I bloody mind!_” Crowley shouted, snapping his head round at me. There were headlights barreling towards us, but he didn’t seem especially fussed about it. “We’re not props in your sodding pretendy-fun spy game of Sneaky Buggers!”

Long time readers (all two of you) will know I see Crowley and Aziraphale as more like subjects in an extremely long-running celebrity profile, the kind you expect to find in those glossy magazines with the boring cartoons. It just happens to run on a tiny no-name blog instead. But all that seemed like exactly the wrong thing to say to an incensed demon with an eighteen-wheel lorry bearing down on us, so I let it go for now. 

“Sorry,” I said. I stuck my phone back in my jacket pocket and held up my hand to show that I was harmless. “It’s sort of a force of habit. It’s all I did for--”

“You take down _ any _ of this and I’m going to make you wish you’d stayed in Hell.”

He was probably serious, and the lorry was incredibly close at that point, so I didn’t force the matter. Crowley turned his attention back to the road and twitched the steering wheel a fraction of a degree to the left, swerving with a precision that would probably make a professional stunt driver wet themself. The inertia swung me straight into the side door and I yelped.

“Ground rules,” Crowley repeated, bothered by exactly none of this. “No telling Aziraphale what your job was. No mentioning how you know me. Eat whatever he offers you, but if there’s one piece of something left on a plate or whatever, don’t even think of going for it.”

“Yes. Got it.”

“Matter of fact, just let me do the talking, all right?”

“All right.” I squirmed, trying to rub the soreness out of my ribs where I had collided with the door. “Only, what are you going to say, exactly?”

He didn’t answer. We hit town limits soon after that and reached the restaurant in a matter of minutes. It was a shabby hole-in-the-wall type of place with naked front windows and mismatched, overstuffed chairs within. Not the sort of establishment I associated with Aziraphale at all, but I ‘spose it wasn’t for me to judge.

As we entered, I sighted Aziraphale at a table near the back. Something in my legs went numb again and my knees locked up.

Crowley pressed a hand between my shoulder blades and shoved me forward.

I had nearly forgotten this fear. I was almost accustomed to Crowley -- we’d met three times now, if you included Morocco -- but I have never, ever spoken to Aziraphale before. Not during my surveillance, not during the 4,000 years BC, not back in Heaven before Creation. Why would I? He was a Principality, charged with actual _ purpose _ and _ responsibilities_. All I had been bred for was to be a pair of eyes.

Aziraphale was intelligent, and beautiful, and _ free_. Even before the Apocalisn’t, he’d been free in a way I don’t think anyone in Heaven ever understood or could even hope to comprehend. He was rebellious and clever and maybe more human than angel, but wasn’t that what made him so brilliant to watch?

He had already started on the little crimped spinach pies before Crowley and I arrived. He dabbed his mouth daintily with a napkin and rose to greet me as if I was something other than utter Grigori trash, and I think if my face were working properly at that point I’d have started tearing up.

“What shall we call you, dear?” he asked, glowing with an internal light I’d tried without success to replicate on canvas roughly 280 times.

“Rezathaniel.” The word just dropped out of me before I could help it.

Aziraphale repeated it, shook my hand with both of his, and primly invited me to sit. It was only once all three of us were properly seated with our drinks in front of us that he got down to the business of asking if I were here to abduct or assassinate him.

“Nn, no,” I said, panicked, mouth filling up with glue. “They only sent me to--”

I felt Crowley’s foot digging into the side of my leg. I bit down on my lip and started over.

“Actually, I Fell, I think,” I said. “So I ‘spose I’m not doing much of anything, really.”

Aziraphale blinked his long eyelashes, pursed his full lips. His gaze darted from me to Crowley and held it, some meaningful silent conversation playing out between the two of them in the span of a split second.

“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale said when the moment had passed and his attention was on me again, all conciliatory smile and warmth. “What do you mean, you ‘think’?”

I explained it as best as I could -- leaving out the parts about what I was doing before the accident, and the blog, and how I knew either of them to begin with. It flowed a bit better than my first attempt. Aziraphale listened carefully to every word of it, just as Crowley had, albeit with more facial expressions. When I was done, he canted his head to one side and hummed thoughtfully.

“Are you in any pain at the moment?” he asked. Then, taking in the current state of my physical form, he added, “Existential pain, I mean. I’m told it hurts quite a lot, Falling.”

We had all been told that. But I had to wonder if the demon seated next to me hadn’t also shared his personal experience with Aziraphale at some point.

“I can’t feel Her,” I admitted. Saying as much to any other angel would probably get me smited on the spot, but Aziraphale only worried his lip. “Hurts a lot more if I dematerialize, but in this shape it’s not so bad.”

Crowley scoffed with a faint shake of his head.

“So you didn’t _ actually _ become a demon, by the sound of it,” Aziraphale said. “You left before--” He waved an exquisitely manicured hand. “--they could actually complete that part.”

“Heaven’s cast them down, but Hell hasn’t yet added them to the payroll,” Crowley concluded. He stopped rocking on the back legs of his chair and leaned forward. “They’re somewhere in-between.”

Another pregnant look passed between the two of them.

“A bit like us, I suppose,” Aziraphale said, with a touch of sadness I couldn’t really understand. “Oh dear, dear. I expected we might see this, but I never imagined it would be this soon.”

For once, Crowley appeared as confused as I felt. “What d’you mean?”

“Defectors,” Aziraphale explained. “I’d entertained it as a possibility, that a few on either side might think differently about the whole thing after we subverted -- well, _ helped _ subvert the War. And after our old sides failed to punish us.”

“Really?” I spoke up, too curious. “They didn’t?”

“Oh my, you didn’t hear about the little ‘execution’ the Circle of Archangels arranged for me?”

“They don’t need to hear about that,” the demon cut in. I could sense a flicker in their auras, the exchange of small traces of each other’s essence, like another silent conversation. “Basically, Grigori, our head offices _ tried _ to punish us, and couldn’t.”

“It was highly amusing,” Aziraphale said, eyes crinkling with mischievous glee. My heart, which had no business beating anyway, pounded out of rhythm for a moment. “And they’ve left us alone since. I feared that your arrival meant that they were making another go of it, but it seems those fears were misplaced.” He spread his soft, elegant hands again. “Allow us to be the first to welcome you to Earth, Rezathaniel.”

“Erm,” I said. “About that…”

“Rotten sense of humor the Almighty’s got, hasn’t She,” Crowley said darkly, taking control of the conversation again with another warning toe-jab to my calf. “Strikes down ten million for a first offense, and these days you don’t even have to go straight on to being a demon after Falling. Get to muck about on a celestial ‘gap year’ like some posh university student.”

It seemed unwise to argue, so I interested myself in the stout Aziraphale had ordered for me just prior to our arrival. Or at any rate, I tried to. Before I’d finished the first sip, a waiter raced over and started in with something frantic about needing identification.

“This never happened back in London,” I groaned when the waiter finally wandered away, convinced via demonic miracle that their eyes had played tricks on them and I was simply enjoying a glass of very dark chocolate milk.

“I find that difficult to believe, my dear girl -- Oh.” Aziraphale caught himself, frowning. “Forgive me, which gender should I use for you while you’re in human form?”

“Never really thought about it,” I said. The humans at the hospital had put me down as male first, then female, and then they’d given up, as most humans did. “I ‘spose ‘they’ is fine.”

Aziraphale grimaced. He tried to smooth his expression into an accommodating smile, but it didn’t quite take. “I don’t suppose you’re flexible about it? It’s just that it’s a little challenging in English, you understand. Not what one would call grammatically correct.”

“Oh, get off it,” Crowley said. “If your pal William can use it, so can you.”

“There are many things dear Will did to language that I would not dream of emulating,” Aziraphale said, with a jut of his chin. “Anyway, I always suspected you had some hand in that _ particular _ poem.”

“Lies and slander. You know I’ve never touched a book in my life.”

“Erm, I don’t really mind either way,” I began.

“You _ do _ mind,” Crowley insisted, suddenly very serious. “Don’t compromise just to please one stodgy old angel.”

“Stodgy, am I?” Aziraphale asked, eyes sparkling. “Just because I like my languages neat and orderly?”

“If you did, you wouldn’t use English at all.”

I sensed I had trod close to some very old, exposed nerve, so I focused on my drink and let the two of them carry on as they liked. I nibbled one of the little spinach pies (fatayer, I learned later) but it wasn’t really gooey or slimy enough for my tastes. At one point I motioned over the waiter for another pint.

This time I really did get chocolate milk. Bugger.

“At any rate,” Aziraphale resumed as I took a mournful first sip. “It _ is _ partly our fault that you’ve… Sauntered Vaguely Downwards, as it were, to borrow Crowley’s turn of phrase. We would be remiss in not offering our assistance.”

“Hang on,” Crowley said. “I bring you a Fallen Angel and the first thing you want to do is adopt them like they’re some baby bird that’s dropped out of the nest?”

“I’ve suggested nothing of the sort, but we do have some obligation as to his -- _ their _ wellbeing and safety. They wouldn’t be here if not for our actions.”

This was true, if not for the reasons Aziraphale assumed.

Crowley’s nose crinkled. “I called this meeting because I wanted to talk about what this might mean for _ you_, angel.” The inflection left no room for doubt about which of us he was addressing. “The way the Grigori tells it, they weren’t even in the office when they were cast down, meaning Heaven can just decide one day to do the same to you. No summons. No trial, not like they gave you one of those the last time.”

“Well,” Aziraphale said, in a delicate voice. “We’d already agreed neither of us was ever going back.”

I choked and sputtered on my drink, streams of chocolate milk going down the front of my jacket. Crowley and Aziraphale didn’t even notice. Their attention was squarely on each other now.

“That’s different,” Crowley said. “This is Falling we’re talking about. If it happened to you, I’d never--” His voice hitched and he cleared his throat. “Look, up till now we’ve been operating on the assumption that both sides are just leaving us on a long leash, right? Because they’re not sure that they actually _ can _ sack us, and they’re afraid to find out. But if Heaven can just… cast down an angel with a bit of paperwork, then…”

“Our friend here doesn’t appear too put out about it,” Aziraphale said with a brave smile, but it was a brittle one. “And you’ve said so yourself: it’s not so bad, once you get used to it.”

“I don’t _ want that _ for you,” Crowley ground out.

“I’m afraid that’s not your decision to make, my dear.”

A tense silence fell. I tried mopping at the stain on my clothes as quietly as possible.

Crowley chewed the inside of his cheek, the force of holding back whatever he wanted to say causing his body to vibrate faintly. Aziraphale, with a glance that said he was completely aware of this, picked the last fatayer off the plate and popped it into his mouth with two bites.

“I do believe we’ve all of us had a very long day,” Aziraphale said, after he had washed this down with an appreciative sip of his wine. “For now let’s head home, shall we?”

_Oh right,_ I thought. Aziraphale didn’t actually live in this town; <strike>Crowley</strike> Crawley was supposed to be somewhere halfway between London and wherever he was residing these days. I tried to think of what was farther south of here.

“Oh! The cottage!” I burst out, before I could restrain myself.

Crowley appeared ready to permanently discorporate me. Across the table, Aziraphale only smiled pleasantly, seeming to conclude Crowley must have told me all about the South Downs address on the drive over.

“He complains, but he’s really terribly fond of it, you know, especially since his morning glories have come in,” Aziraphale said.

Suddenly I was lost again. “Morning glories--?”

“Oh, yes. The garden’s all his doing; haven’t much of a green thumb, myself. I spend most of my time in the kitchen. One must have one’s hobbies during retirement.”

“Retir--” My voice came out more like a squawk.

“I never said anything about letting them stay,” Crowley protested. “You know how I feel about guests.”

“I’m well aware, yes,” Aziraphale said. He signaled the waiter for the bill, then as an afterthought leaned across the table and miracled the chocolate stain out of my clothes. “But as we’ve thoroughly established, those protections were put in place to ward against certain celestial and occult forces, and our Rezathaniel here is neither.”

Crowley wasn’t satisfied. I could sense the frustration ratcheting up inside him again. “If you had any idea what this git had done -- Who they _ were _\--”

“I don’t see how that’s any of our business.” Beneath Aziraphale’s lofty tone there was an unspoken subtext of _ ‘Besides, they’re a Grigori, everyone knows what that type gets up to.’ _ “They’re here now, and they wouldn’t be if not for us. I’d say that obligates us to offer whatever help we can.”

Apparently, that settled it. “Nrgh,” Crowley said.

I think I was numb for the entire drive down, floating in a warm haze of confusion and soreness and fatigue (and whatever the combination of spinach, cheese, stout, and chocolate had done to my insides). Aziraphale and Crowley carried on talking and only periodically seemed to remember I was listening from the back seat, which felt surreally familiar. 

Finally, the car passed onto a gravel road and Crowley cut his speed to something almost normal. As we headed up toward a deserted hill, he made a gesture and the air around the Bentley shuddered. I felt an electrical crackle spread through my body from my toes to my head, and when it passed, the scenery ahead of us wasn’t empty anymore.

“Heck,” I said, mostly to myself, watching the thatched-roof cottage come into view like some legendary city out of the mist. There was a white picket fence, vine trellises, and apple trees in the garden. “Folded space. That’s brilliant. _ Nobody _would be able to find a spot like this.”

“Not for all the forces of Heaven and Earth,” Aziraphale said fondly, like he was remarking upon some neat science project Crowley had come up with. “Or Hell, for that matter. The real challenge was making it so we were still visible to resident humans, of course. Tricky thing to do, localized metaphysics.”

“Because someone decided he wanted to meet the neighbors,” Crowley grumbled.

“Is it really all right for me to be here?” I asked.

“No,” Crowley said at the same time as Aziraphale answered, “Of course, my dear.”

The inside of the cottage smelled like baked bread and old books. A _ lot _ of books. Virtually any bit of wall space not taken up by a painting or a mirror had been converted into shelving, with books tucked in every conceivable crevice, above doorways, under steps. I traced a finger along a few familiar spines I recognized from the bookshop.

“Now, let’s see here,” Aziraphale said, easing my bad arm out of its sling and running his gentle fingers over the cast, willing the bones beneath to stitch and scrapes to heal. He touched my temple and the swelling subsided, leaving only a faint tingling, like the aftermath of a headache. After I’d worked the cast off, Aziraphale took my jacket and hung it on the coat stand right by his own. “There we are. Let’s put you up in my room, shall we? Do you have any experience sleeping?”

“Erm,” I said.

“Of course they don’t, angel,” Crowley said, watching all of this from near the stairwell with his hands tucked into the too-small pockets of his jeans. “Not everybody’s been on Earth for six thousand years.”

“Right, of course. Well, not to worry,” Aziraphale assured me, patting my recently restored arm. “I’m not much in the habit of it myself, but I still find that a nap does wonders after a trying day. I’ll just head up and start drawing the bath for you, shall I? Crowley, dear, would you be a dove and put the kettle on, please?”

“That’s really not--” I began, but Aziraphale was already climbing the stairs. Helpless, I looked to Crowley, expecting at least an intimidating glare there, maybe a warning hiss to shut my mouth and follow along. Instead, I found him stalking toward the kitchen as instructed.

For a moment I stood in the foyer, looking between the stairwell and Crowley’s retreating back, trying to decide which of them I feared less.

I went after Crowley.

“So you,” I said in a low voice, as Crowley placed what I recognized to be Aziraphale’s tea kettle onto the kitchen’s antique stove, “_live _with him now?”

“Shut up.” Despite his tone, Crowley was keeping his voice down as well. “Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to take a nice bath, and then you’re going to stay in his room and not touch _ anything _ until daybreak, and then the moment the sun comes up you’re getting on the first, slowest charter bus back to London.”

All of that sounded pretty reasonable under the circumstances, but I was never very good at self-preservation when my curiosity got involved.

“At least fill me in a little,” I begged. “I’ve never even heard how you got Armageddon canceled. They pulled me off assignment before then. And now you’re, you’re sharing a cottage and _ retired _ and you’ve got a ring on your finger--”

Crowley hid the knuckles of his left hand as though aware of them for the first time. He gave me a dirty look over the tops of his glasses.

“Name me a single reason I shouldn’t obliterate you right where you stand,” he said. “Why I shouldn’t turn you into a fine red mist right here.”

“Er,” I said. “It’d make a mess of his kitchen…?”

Somehow, that seemed to work. He snarled and focused his attention on the kettle again.

I tried and failed to hold back a smile. “I never reported it, you know. Not any of it.”

“Well done. You think that makes it all right, do you?”

“Of course not,” I lied. It wasn’t as though I couldn’t grasp the concept of privacy, but surely I deserved a _ few _ points for the whole ‘suppressing centuries of collusion’ thing. “I’m just… trying to explain why I’m not a threat.”

That provoked an arched eyebrow from Crowley. “You, a threat? You couldn’t scare my marigolds.”

_ He has marigolds. _ I cleared my throat, not because I had to, but it gave me an opportunity to school my expression.

“Well,” I said, “it’s just that you’re always protecting him, and…”

I trailed off, cringing as Crowley drew himself up. Above our heads, the pipes thumped as Aziraphale finished drawing the bath and shut off the faucet.

“Rezathaniel,” Aziraphale called down, while Crowley’s eyes narrowed at me and the kettle behind him started to whistle. “Bath’s all ready for you, dear.”

I slipped out of that kitchen faster than I had from any room in my life.

Sidebar, did you know human skin gets really disgusting when it’s wet?

**Log Entry #7  
** **Date: 21 September, 2036**

Soooo that’s where we at.

It’s sort of perfect, innit? It only took near-discorporation and eternal damnation(ish), but I’ve wound up not simply in A&C’s outer orbit, but up close and personal ~in their lives~ like an embedded reporter or something. Pretty sure I’m all right with Aziraphale believing I’m a defector from Heaven and not just some git who failed to turn their reports in on time if it means getting to watch him and Crowley being all domestic.

Possible downsides: being found out, social awkwardness, constant threat of annihilation from Crowley, chores.

Possible upsides: LITERALLY EVERYTHING ELSE. What if they hold hands while I’m here? What if Aziraphale calls Crowley a pet name so embarrassing they both blush? WHAT IF I FINALLY GET AN EXPLANATION FOR THE WHOLE INTERMINGLED COSMIC ESSENCES THINGDHDGDFKLSDLKSDHKJDF

I’m going to explode ;o;

TO BE CONTINUED


	2. Christmas in South Downs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's Christmas time at the South Downs cottage! Unfortunately, there's the little matter of gifts...

**Log Entry #8  
** **Date: 30 September, 2036**

Crowley’s threat to ship me back to London never materialized. Aziraphale put his foot down about it, said I needed time to “properly adjust” and “recover from the shock of it all, poor thing.” And, he said, as long as I was here, I could “help out round the house a little.”

Very keen on being helpful, me.

Aziraphale started me off simple, tidying the kitchen and the other downstairs rooms, dusting picture frames and the tops of his less precious books. They have this one weird statue I can only imagine came from Crowley’s collection and I felt myself blushing as I polished it.

(Do they… _ do _things like that, you reckon? I mean they’re already living together, and Crowley’s got a ring on his finger. “Wrestling” can’t be too far behind, can it? Except I haven’t seen them so much as brush shoulders.)

After a few days, Crowley softened and let me help in the garden as well. Not tending to the plants, you understand -- just hauling bags of fertilizer for him, digging holes, moving hoses. Things he could accomplish instantly with a demonic miracle if he wanted, but watching me struggle with a big heavy wheelbarrow just tickles him for some reason. He keeps bees as well and made very sure not to tell me about this until I wandered too close to one of the hives yesterday. (Ow.)

When he isn’t gardening, Crowley takes long walks down the shore or goes out on a drive. Sometimes he’ll be gone most of the day and come back smelling like jet fuel and demolition, carrying a gift-wrapped box of souvenirs or sweets under his arm.

In the evenings we have dinner together. Or rather, Aziraphale has dinner, and Crowley watches him as avidly as he’d done for 2,000 years, and I watch them both. Every now and then Aziraphale asks one or both of us to taste test something he’s cooked, but he stopped asking me after I said I thought it all needed more grease.

After dinner they set me to doing the washing up whilst they go have a glass of something out on the back porch. God, they have so many names for their alcohol, I can’t keep up with it. On some nights they’ll put a record on Aziraphale’s antique gramophone, always inevitably something classical. Except the one Rameau record Crowley gifted Aziraphale in 1975, which he’d left in the Bentley too long and now only plays Queen’s “You’re My Best Friend.”

I think they might be trying to murder me with that one.

Aziraphale’s bedroom -- which he insists I stay in, says he doesn’t use it for much but storage anyway -- overlooks the garden. At night, I like to open the windows and listen to him and Crowley talking on the back porch. (It’s not spying to do it like this, is it? I mean, I’m a guest, nights are mild, it’s a small cottage.) Usually they talk about the same things they always have, literature and music and philosophy, occasionally theology, what they’re worried Heaven and Hell might do next.

I rarely feature in these conversations, which is just as well, but tonight when Aziraphale was two glasses in to his sherry-or-port-or-whatever he said:

“Do you know, I think there’s something familiar about Rezathaniel.”

“Yeah, because they’ve been living here for more than a week,” Crowley said.

“No, I mean… Oh, it’s silly, but I can’t shake the idea that I’ve seen them somewhere before. A social event, perhaps.”

I felt a lump in my throat. Crowley cleared his.

“Nah, I don’t think so,” he said. “You know those imps, the uh, the little demons that were always running round Hastur and stuff? Pointy hair?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Same stock, I think. Former Grigori. Guess She gave up after a while and just started mass-producing ‘em.”

“Angels aren’t _ mass-produced_,” Aziraphale said, sounding personally unsettled by the idea. “We’re not… factory assembled, stick a bit here, add a little widget there. She makes all of us in Her image.”

“Well, then She’s real fond of that particular model,” Crowley said, and that was the last they spoke of it.

**Log Entry #9  
** **Date: 3 October, 2036**

_ Anonymous asked… _

_ So is this like a roleplay account or something? Because you’re sharing a LOT of personal info on these guys you’re saying are angels or whatever. _

No! First of all, only one of them is an angel. Secondly, they’re not guys. And also, if you read my earlier posts, you’d know the cottage is invisible to everyone except the neighbors, so it’s totally all right for me to do this.

Can’t believe I finally got an ask on this blog and it’s somebody who didn’t even check the archive. :C

**Log Entry #10  
** **Date: 9 October, 2036**

Let’s talk about ~*~Aziraphale~*~ this time.

Like Crowley, Aziraphale enjoys long walks. Sometimes he asks me to come along, but I don’t have half the stamina he has (which seems to please him). If he isn’t taking a leisurely constitutional up and down the coast, he’s walking to the nearest village for groceries, always in need of butter or flour for something he’s making. He’s become fast friends with the vicar of the local church as well, often helping out with bake sales, teaching Sunday school to the village tots, and the like.

His lessons are a little less than orthodox, from what I’ve gathered, but the whole parish is far too much in love with him to object very strongly.

This evening he came back from his grocery run with a bag full of greens and a couple glass jars of raspberry preserves, courtesy of the proprietor at the general store. Too much from the harvest, apparently, and she knew he liked to bake bread.

Crowley listened with half attention to this and then brushed out a bit of dried leaf that had gotten stuck in Aziraphale’s hair. I nearly had a brain aneurysm.

**Log Entry #11  
** **Date: 14 October, 2036**

_ Anonymous asked… _

_ What do you mean, “from what I’ve gathered”? Shouldn’t angels know the Bible backwards and forwards? _

Not really? I mean, I’ve never known an angel who was big on it, except for maybe reading the parts with them in. And unless you’re someone like Gabriel you don’t usually get mentioned by name, so most of the time it’s just reading about someone else getting all the credit.

And I mean, that’s supposing the Bible’s got your highlights in there at all. Catch a Grigori reading Genesis; it’s not exactly flattering stuff.

**Log Entry #12  
** **Date: 25 October, 2036**

“You know what’sss the matter with cats?” Crowley said tonight while he was out on the porch with Aziraphale. It’s getting too cold for them to drink outside but they’re both stubborn about it. “They’re a bunch of… bunch of cultural appropriators.”

“You just don’t like them,” Aziraphale countered.

“I like ‘em fine. It’s them what don’t like _ me_. But it’s not about that, s’about -- hisssss’ng. Hissing.”

“Loads of animals hiss, dear.”

“Yeah but they don’t all have the slit eyes and the bit with the ears when they do it. That’s the appropriation. They flatten the ears cos it’s ‘sposed to look like a ssssnake. Saw on a nature program.”

“I don’t see how that’s approb… ap… stealing a look.”

“Well, snakes came first, right? Sss’reptiles. You don’t get mammals till later. Stands to reason.”

“What reason?” Aziraphale asked, suspicious. “Have you gone and become… an evolutionist, darling?”

There was a worried pause. “No,” Crowley said after it, sounding guilty. “That’d… that’d be a real head-upside-down-y turn of events, wouldn’t it, a demon believin’ evolution.”

“Some humans,” Aziraphale said slowly, trying to spare Crowley some embarrassment by helping him out of the pit he’d dug himself into, “like to think the story of Creation is metaphorical. That the ‘day’ in which the Almighty created the beasts of the Earth according to their kinds was actually a process of millions of years.”

“Even my side aren’t that inefficient.”

“Your old side,” Aziraphale corrected gently.

“My old side,” Crowley agreed. Then, a touch mournfully: “Blighters don’t know what they lost.”

“I know, dear.”

“I was… th’best. Best demon they ever had.”

“Wouldn’t go that far, dear. You were a mite too nice by Hell’s standards.”

Crowley grunted, a reluctant concession. His ability to accept compliments directly correlates with how many drinks he’s had, I’ve noticed.

“But they didn’t deserve you,” Aziraphale continued. “That part’s right.”

“_I’m _ the one who dun’t deserve--”

“Oh, hush, my love. No more of that.”

**Log Entry #13  
** **Date: 30 October, 2036**

_ Tay460 asked… _

_ So earlier this month you did an ask blog where you said Crowley and Aziraphale aren’t guys. WTF are they, then? He/him lesbians? _

Lolololololol I wonder if there’s a way I could share this one with them without Crowley flaying me alive.

**Log Entry #14  
** **Date: 5 November, 2036**

_ Anonymous asked… _

_ Remember remember the Fifth of November! I was wondering if you could say a bit more about how Crowley and Aziraphale met…? _

Welllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll… 

I wasn’t there for all of it, mind. I only got assigned to monitor Aziraphale around the time that Jesus fellow got nailed. But when I was first briefed prior to my deployment, my archangel told me that Aziraphale and Crowley had first made contact on the day the first humans left Eden. They likely met dozens, maybe hundreds of times before I entered the picture.

It’s thrilling to think about, isn’t it? That’s 4,000 years where no one really knows anything about what the two were up to. Were they friends even back then? Did they put on a show of being enemies? I’ve loads of theories, but it’s tough to ask them about this stuff without making them suspicious, you know?

As for what their first meeting was like… Again, I only have Heaven’s official report on the matter, and that was from aerial surveillance, from Pleskithassiel -- who was just a _ rubbish _ Grigori all round; no surprise at all xe was one of the ones caught up in that whole fornication business -- so the details are impossibly vague. It sounds like they quite hit it off? There was no smiting, at least.

(Although what a meet cute that would have been…)

P.S. Never really understood Brits’ fascination with that Fawkes fellow. I’ve heard the bit about “the last man to enter Parliament with honest intentions” but all I remember was that he smelled a bit.

**Log Entry #15  
** **Date: 7 November, 2036**

_ Anonymous asked… _

_ if ur a real angle wots the true name of god then _

Not sure why humans are so hung up on this one! It’s like going round calling your mum by her given name, isn’t it? I mean, I assume that’s what it’s like.

Anyway, I tried writing it out here, but no matter how many times I posted, it kept getting caught by the spam filter, so ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

**Log Entry #16  
** **Date: 19 November, 2036**

Crowley came home smashed again tonight. Third night this week. There was a bit of a row over it. Thought he might’ve been drinking at the local pub but apparently he’d popped over across the channel for the day, did a bit of bar-hopping in Calais.

He’s bored, he said. He misses the job. Not the sowing discord exactly, but the planning of it all, the projects spanning decades, the elegant large-scale execution. Aziraphale is against either of them influencing human events anymore, said they’ve already done enough meddling. Crowley yelled that Aziraphale couldn’t expect him to stay satisfied with just his bloody garden.

Heard a lot of door slamming. I don’t think anything got resolved.

**Log Entry #17  
** **Date: 22 November, 2036**

_ merCUTEio asked… _

_ ummmmm really surprised you’re not out here calling out zira’s obvsly toxic behavior? refusing to support your spouses hobbies is textbook emotional abuse jsyk _

No I’m pretty sure it’s just a regular old couple’s row.

Anyway, we’re quite clear on “hobbies” in this case being the slow inexorable erosion of human souls toward eternal damnation, yes? Maybe it’s a good thing he sticks to beekeeping.

**Log Entry #18  
** **Date: 23 November, 2036**

_ wow asked… _

_ crowley has never done anything wrong ever in his life uwu✿ _

Be fair. He’s done a _ few _things wrong.

**Log Entry #19  
** **Date: 25 November, 2036**

Ughhhh I miss doing my art. Can’t even take a decent shot on my phone, and all Aziraphale’s got to sketch with is butcher paper and 1,000yo vellum I’m not allowed to touch.

How do I even explain to him that I like doing art? Sure, any angel stuck on Earth for millennia would pick up a few hobbies, but Aziraphale thinks I’m fresh off the escalator. Crowley could come up with a good excuse but 1) he would never help on something like this and 2) he’s still not exactly talking much with Aziraphale.

Sucks because it’s well and truly winter here now and there’s not even gardening to be done. I’m so booooooooored…

**Log Entry #20  
** **Date: 27 November, 2036**

_ Anonymous asked… _

_ this sucks, i came here for the domestic fluff and got relationship bad end instead _

_ can’t you idk DO something about a&c? make em bury the hatchet? your an angel right, play cupid ffs _

It’s really _ not _ that serious, as their fights go. Trust me. You should've been there for the 14th century.

But also yeah I’m trying, promise.

**Log Entry #21  
** **Date: 28 November, 2036**

“Do you, you know,” I asked Aziraphale tonight, standing beside him at the sink as he passed me dishes to rinse and dry, “_do _ anything together?”

“Oh, all sorts,” Aziraphale said. “Less now that we’ve moved out to the country, but we’re always seeing shows together, visiting parks. We’ve been meaning to take a proper holiday, to Seoul, I thought, or perhaps Auckland?”

“No, I mean…” I sought around for a neutral way to frame it. “Couple-y… things.”

“He’s gotten you into watching the telly, hasn’t he?” Aziraphale sighed. “We’re not a pair of young courting humans, my dear. There’s no need for us to muck about with--” He cast about with a sudsed hand trying to think of examples. “--amusement parks or joint savings accounts.”

“I meant more… holding hands?”

Aziraphale pursed his lips in thought.

“Well,” he said eventually. “I wouldn’t want to rush into things.”

“Rush into--? But you’ve been together for--” I bit off the remainder of the sentence, and also part of my tongue.

“My, what _ has _ he been saying to you?”

“Nothing,” I said, maybe louder than I should have. “I just… heard of it, you know. There were, erm, rumors. Back in Heaven.”

“Ah. Of course,” Aziraphale said. His eyes darkened. “I’m sure it all must have sounded very romantic to a Grigori. Star-crossed lovers. Angel with a demon boyfriend.”

I winced. There was so much to unpack in that and none of it would lead anywhere good.

“Sorry,” I said. “Forget I said anything.”

“Oh dear. I’ve upset you.” Aziraphale let the plates drift back into the sink and grabbed a soft towel. No matter how much baking and washing he does, his hands are always immaculate and smooth. They never even prune. “I don’t mean to suggest that was the _ entire _ reason you left. And even if it were, it would be nothing to be ashamed about.”

I looked up. “No?”

“We are as the Lord made us. I’ll always believe that, no matter my feelings towards… administration.” Aziraphale made a face as though the word had spoiled in his mouth. “We were designed to love, and to love every expression of love -- the virtuous kinds, at least. And mortals are so very talented at loving, I’m sure you’ve noticed. They have whole languages for it. Why wouldn’t a Watcher, a being whose very existence is built around humanity, find it terribly romantic for an angel to choose a mortal love with a demon?”

God, I hope I’ve managed to take this all down accurately. At that point I wasn’t even sure how I was still standing upright.

“So you do?” I asked. “Love him, I mean? In a mortal way?”

Aziraphale demurred. “As much as one can do, I suppose, when one is not and cannot become mortal. But I prefer to believe we had _ slightly _ nobler intentions when it came to averting the War.”

There were a lot of things I wished I’d said at that moment. In no particular order:

  * What intentions could possibly be nobler than saving 8 billion lives, including the life of the one you love most?
  * Why would it matter less if your intentions were somehow “impure”? The result was the same.
  * Are you trying to convince me or yourself? I _know_ you. I know exactly how far from grace you are. If I cared about that, I’d have turned you in 800 years ago.
  * I don’t have a horse in this race one way or another. All I’ve got is the two of you.
  * Surely saving the Earth and all the kingdoms thereof is enough to maybe, just possibly, hold hands now and then? Perhaps a hug? A peck on the cheek? I’m not asking for a reenactment of that funny statue in the den, although if you were up to that sort of thing I’d be completely supportive and give you all the privacy you need, of course. I’m just saying that you both have been radiating mutual affection for at least 1,995 years and likely all 6,040 of them, and you’re _living together_ now, he has a ring on his finger that I’m damned certain wasn’t there before, and some of us have just gotten very invested in this whole thing and would very much appreciate if you would give our hearts a bloody break already.

What I actually said was:

“I meant no offense.”

“None taken, my dear,” Aziraphale lied, and then we finished the washing up.

* * *

> **FREE INCOMING SMS  
** **TAP TO UNLOCK**
> 
> **From:** Tom H  
**2 December, 2036  
** **13:34**
> 
> reza m8  
u dead or wot
> 
> oh shit Tom hi
> 
> feckin hell  
u dissapear fr 5 mos and thats the 1st thing u say  
suvi says she saw u got run over by a lorry  
asked her wtf u was doin up in mayfair 2 begin wit
> 
> Look yeah I’m sorry. Lot’s happened  
You still have my paints?
> 
> yah i got em
> 
> ;o; thank youuuu  
I’m in the south right now, I’ll try to get up there soon  
TYSM for hanging on to everything
> 
> wtf u doin down south
> 
> Spending some time with some relatives
> 
> wht kinna posh relations r those  
goin round sunbahtin whilst we freezin our bolix off here in ldn
> 
> I mean, it’s cold here too, you know  
We got a bit of snow yesterday  
Didn’t think it still snowed anywhere in England
> 
> **\----------------------------------------**
> 
> **YOU HAVE USED UP YOUR FREE MSG ALLOTMENT FOR DEC**
> 
> **Play ad to unlock 10 more messages?**
> 
> **\----------------------------------------**
> 
> lookit u movin up in the world  
or down or w/e  
goin 2 beaches n makin snowmen like a rich ol wanker  
nvr even seen snow cept on th telly me  
spose u wont be needin these paints afterall
> 
> Look please just hold them until the end of the month, alright?  
You can sell some of the paintings if you like  
Call it rent or whatever
> 
> u want me 2 sell ur naff angel piantings 4 u  
u reeeeeealy askin me that
> 
> Take them to the market in Hyde Park  
I PROMISE you’ll make a killing  
Better than bin-diving for dinner am I right?
> 
> m8  
nuffin is better than bindiving  
cept last time suvi got food poisoned so yeah fair point

* * *

**Log Entry #22  
** **Date: 15 December, 2036**

Today I was helping Aziraphale in the kitchen again -- he _ loves _ having an extra set of hands when he bakes, and he’s baking a lot lately, all these puddings and mince pies and gingerbread people for Crowley to take to the kids in the village -- and I let slip something I shouldn’t have about the Apocalisn’t.

“I’m surprised he shared that with you,” Aziraphale said, taking the piping bag from me and proceeding to dot the eyes on a batch of biscuit snow angels. “He’s a touch embarrassed about it, the old serpent. Always thought his Nanny Ashtoreth disguise was tip-top, and then young Warlock takes one look at his new tutor Mister Harrison and asks why Nanny’s cut all her hair off.”

I matched his laugh, and then when the moment was right I asked, “Do you still check up on him? The Dowling boy.”

(Please read the archives, because I’m not rehashing the whole Dowling business again.)

“It’s _ Councilman _ Dowling now,” Aziraphale said with unvarnished pride. “On his way to becoming a senator, I expect. I do hope they get everything back in order soon, the Americans. It was all well and good when that business with the guillotines was just _ jokes _, but now Crowley won’t even allow me to pop over for a look in on our Warlock. Says I’d manage to _ put myself in harm’s way _ again. Do you know,” he added suddenly, lowering the piping bag and squinting at the frost patterns on the kitchen window, “I don’t believe I actually told Upstairs about the tutoring bit. As far as they’re concerned, I was Brother Francis for the whole eleven years.”

“Oh,” I said. “Erm.”

“It’s just that it got frightfully busy, as the boy got older,” Aziraphale continued, brow furrowing. He tried resuming his work, managing to ice one of the angels with no less than five eyes. “And I thought it best to downplay our close proximity. Perhaps we got careless, rode together once too often…”

“You didn’t,” I said, before I could get my mouth under control. My throat went dry with panic. “Er, I mean -- obviously you mustn’t have, or Heaven would’ve acted sooner, right?”

“Hm, yes,” Aziraphale said, sounding uncertain. He wrung the piping bag anxiously, one of the snow angels gaining a wriggling black hole where its head should be. “I suppose we’ll never know what actually tipped them off. There were a few occasions Crowley became convinced Heaven had set agents on us, you know. I didn’t want to believe it at the time, but looking back on it now, perhaps they were simply waiting for me to make one error too many…”

I looked helplessly out the window, hoping vaguely to see Crowley headed up the path, hands dug into the pockets of his winter coat (Aziraphale’s Christmas gift, 2010) with his knit wool scarf (1952) wrapped round his face. No such luck. He was out on another of his jaunts today, probably off buying spices in Rome or sowing some pro bono discord in Liverpool.

“Oh!” Aziraphale exclaimed, looking down and discovering the mess he’d created. He handed (the remains of) the piping bag back to me and got a tiny spatula out of the drawer to scrape off the excess, but succeeded only in getting the lemon icing on the wings hopelessly smeared. Tutting, Aziraphale elected to spread the black buttercream over the entire surface of the biscuit instead.

“Well,” he said with a sigh. “I suppose now we have a little snow-Crowley in our batch of snow angels. Let’s tell him we did it on purpose, shall we?”

I nodded, queasy with relief.

“That reminds me,” Aziraphale continued after a moment, apparently trying to kill me via emotional whiplash. “I’ve been thinking of heading up to London later this week to do a bit of holiday shopping. Would you care to come along, my dear?”

“Wouldn’t you, erm. Prefer to go with Crowley?” 

“Oh, no. I’ll mainly be shopping for him, you see. I’m sure it must seem terribly odd, an angel and a demon exchanging gifts at Christmas--”

“I’ll come,” I said, before I could stop myself.

**Log Entry #23  
** **Date: 16 December, 2036**

CAN YOU, EVEN IMAGINE,

I mean at the time I was like ‘oh ok sure’ but the more I thought about it tHE MORE ECSTATIC I GOT

ME, a sodding useless former Grigori, going with AZIRAPHALE to LONDON to pick out a gift for CROWLEY

And also somehow contriving a way to pick up my paints from Tom whilst I’m there BUT

~*~*~*CHRISTMAS GIFTS FOR CROWLEY*~*~*~

**Log Entry #24  
** **Date: 17 December, 2036**

……………………Oh Lord he’s going to murder me if he finds out, won’t he?

Spose I’m lucky he and Aziraphale aren’t speaking much at the moment. They still haven’t totally made up from that fight last month, despite all my nudging. Your comments are appreciated, but I wouldn’t worry; I’ve seen them go centuries like this and they always patch things up in the end.

Not often with gifts, though. Guess that means the pressure’s on, eh? I’ve had a hand in nudging Aziraphale towards certain presents before, but my success rate’s only been about 50%. 

(Biggest success has been the black silk pajamas I helpfully set in Aziraphale’s path in 1968, although I didn’t realize it until recently. Crowley’s much less concerned about keeping up appearances round me when the weather’s turned and all he wants to do is curl up in a pile of blankets by the cottage fireplace.)

Got to think about what he’d _ really _ like. Preferably something he’ll like so much, he won’t even want to murder me if he learns I helped pick it. Open to suggestions!

* * *

> **FREE INCOMING SMS  
** **TAP TO UNLOCK**
> 
> **From:** Tom H  
**Date: 18 December, 2036  
** **09:11**
> 
> reza m8  
gonna see u 2day or wot
> 
> I’m on the train as we speak!
> 
> spose thats a no then
> 
> Funny haha
> 
> **\----------------------------------------**
> 
> **YOU HAVE USED UP YOUR MSG ALLOTMENT**
> 
> **Play ad to unlock 10 more messages?**
> 
> **\----------------------------------------**
> 
> Can’t talk much tho. Relative will wonder what I’m up to
> 
> lol who u with anyway
> 
> I told you, I can’t talk  
He doesn’t use phones much and he’ll think I’m chatting with  
HELLO CROWLEY, DEAR, JUST POPPING OVER TO LONDON TODAY. SHAN’T BE HOME LATER THAN SEVEN.  
LOVELY TO SEE YOU TEACHING REZATHANIEL THESE MODERN DEVICES.  
YOU’RE MUCH BETTER SUITED TO IT THAN I AM, I DARESAY, AND THE EXTRA RESPONSIBILITY WILL BE GOOD FOR YOU.  
CAN’T HAVE YOU COOPED UP BABYING THE INDOOR PLANTS ALL WINTER, AFTER ALL.  
HOWEVER, IF YOU THINK YOU CAN TEMPT REZATHANIEL INTO GIVING YOU A HINT AS TO YOUR GIFT, YOU SHALL HAVE ANOTHER THING COMING, MY DARLING.  
NOW, I’VE LEFT A ROAST IN THE OVEN. IF YOU COULD BE A DOVE AND CHECK IT EVERY SO OFTEN, MAKE SURE IT HASN’T CAUGHT ROUND THE EDGES, OR PUT SOME FOIL ON IT IF IT HAS, I WOULD BE EVER SO
> 
> **\----------------------------------------**
> 
> **YOU HAVE USED UP YOUR MSG ALLOTMENT**
> 
> **Play ad to unlock 10 more messages?**
> 
> **\----------------------------------------**
> 
> ololololololololololo hi rezas nan
> 
> He’s not my nan!  
He’s my  
Uncle?
> 
> ur uncle who talks like a nan ololololololololo
> 
> >:C

* * *

**Log Entry #25  
** **Date: 18 December, 2036**

Ended up with a whole _ list _ of gift ideas in my drafts folder. Thanks everyone who sent in suggestions! These were my favorites:

  * Superblack nail varnish
  * _Paula Bell’s Scat_ EP (probably can’t find outside Japan)
  * Antique Aynsley bone china Nelros Cup of Fortune tea set
  * New wristwatch
  * “Uploaded” human brain (may need to special order)
  * __The Big Book of Marine Mammals__

Aziraphale is insisting on stopping by a few less “esoteric” places first, though. Really can’t imagine what we’re supposed to find for Crowley at Selfridges but it’s Aziraphale’s wallet, I suppose.

Sidebar: Aziraphale still uses a wallet.

ADDENDUM:

I’m so confused.

“We may as well,” Aziraphale said, “since we’re here anyway.”

I pointed out Grigori don’t really feel the cold (which isn’t true, it’s more like we’re not bothered by it, what with all the perching atop church steeples and mountains overlooking humanity and the like), but he insisted we at least pick out a nice winter coat and a pair of snow boots. So that I can stay dry whilst I’m out shoveling, he explained.

It’s all a bit much. Currently I’m consoling myself with the fact that Aziraphale selected everything, so it runs no risk of appearing even remotely stylish.

ADDENDUM:

GODDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

Wait am I even allowed to say that anymore? Whatever. I’m Dying.

So it was getting towards evening and Aziraphale STILL hadn’t found anything he liked for Crowley, and he suggested we should start heading back toward the station, because in Aziraphale’s world all the trains stop running at like 5pm. We were just getting out of Harrods and I said, look, Hyde Park is right there, do you mind if we visit Angels Market? And he needed some convincing, because in his opinion the stalls there are a bit too _ plebeian_, but I acted like I was just terribly fascinated with the name and please, please, can we, just real quick?

I’d actually set up shop here for a few years in the 2020s. Nothing that could be accused of being “legal,” but if you stick a cart full of angel paintings between a bratwurst stall and a decorative candlemaker, no one is going to bat an eye. Tom had messaged me the location and I was all set to make a beeline for it once we were through the gates, but for all Aziraphale’s protests, as soon as he saw the little star lanterns and ceramic tree ornaments he was oohing and ahhing at every little thing and insisted on going stall-by-stall.

After about the 10th novelty blown glass stand, I got fed up and found an opportunity to slip away. Tom was exactly where I expected him to be. The paintings… weren’t.

“What did you do, forget them?” I asked.

“Nah, mate,” he said. “Sold the lot. You weren’t kidding. Posh people go mad for this naff angel stuff.”

“You sold _ all of them? _”

“Well,” Tom drawled, and checked behind the cart. He came back with exactly three canvases, all small ones. “Reckoned these were some of your practice ones, so I didn’t put them out, but…”

I looked at them and paled.

See, I need to explain something. Imagination doesn’t come easily to an angel, even a former one. No one kicks up a fuss if you use satellite images as a reference for your fancy starscapes, but when it comes to painting faces, most of mine end up resembling one of two models. I’m sure you can guess which ones.

Two of the canvases were thinly-veiled portraits of Aziraphale. The third was a painting of him _ and _ Crowley, circling some newborn nebula or something, all done up in flowing gold-threaded robes with halos and pearlescent wings.

I’d quite liked it when I had first painted it, but I’d always been too embarrassed to put it up for display, for obvious reasons. And now here it was, just exposed for the whole blessed world to see like one of those intensely personal sexual fantasies humans sometimes publish under the guise of literary fiction.

Tom, oblivious to all this, went on: “I know you said I could keep the proceeds, mate, but it ain’t fair, what with you making them and all. What say we go seventy-thirty?”

“Just keep it,” I said, feeling numb. I was struggling not to flip all three canvases face-side down before anyone could see them. “I don’t really need money right now.”

Tom took in my clean face, neat braids, and most importantly my fancy new winter coat. He smirked one of those wretched knowing smirks of his.

“Well, I ain’t arguing,” he said. “Oh, but hang on. Lemme get the paints for you, anyway.”

He had them in a couple of plastic bags for me, together with a clean B5-sized canvas still in the shrinkwrap and what seemed to be most of my brushes. No easel, no sealants, and definitely no sign of my old Polaroid camera, which I imagine he’d long since pawned or broken. That was fine too, I suppose. Compared with the AI-assisted stereoscopic beast I had on me the day I collided with the lorry, the loss of a vintage hobby camera barely registered.

We’d just completed the handover when I heard Aziraphale’s voice coming up from behind me.

“Ah! So this is where you’d gone off to, Rezathaniel,” he said, appearing at my shoulder with barely a ripple of displaced air. “You mustn’t go wandering off like that, my dear. Human cities can be very dangerous to the unprepared. Wouldn't want you venturing into any more bins -- Oh, hello, my good fellow!” Aziraphale greeted Tom belatedly. “What lovely paintings you have here. Is this your own handiwork, then?”

Tom’s face split into a toothy grin.

“This your nan, then?” he asked me.

“Uncle,” I stuttered, feeling helpless.

“I see you’ve been chatting up our Rezathaniel here,” Aziraphale said, without a hitch. “Thank you for taking such good care of them. I’m afraid they’re rather new to… all this.” His gaze slid back to the paintings set out at the front of the cart. “Well,” he said, as my whole body cringed. “That’s a rather good likeness, wouldn’t you say, my dear?”

“Erm,” I said.

“I had wondered what must have drawn you over to this little corner. It has a certain energy, doesn’t it? See how the artist formed the edge of the lips here--”

“Uh-huh,” I said, eyes fixed on Tom and begging, _ pleading _ with him not to say a word.

“I’ve sat for quite a few of master artists in my time, naturally, but on the rare occasion Crowley’s modeled it’s all ended up as statues of Satan and whatnot. Never like this. I wonder…” Aziraphale trailed off, tapping at his bottom lip with a gloved finger. “Young man,” he said to Tom, “how much for this one here?”

In desperation, I made a throat-slitting gesture. Tom’s grin simply got nastier.

“For you, sir, five pound fifty,” he said.

For the briefest moment, I felt a flare of outrage. That would explain how Tom had managed to burn through my entire stock of paintings in a matter of days. Oh but Lord then he was _ wrapping _ the thing in brown paper and _ putting it in a bag for him _ and Aziraphale was insisting he keep the change from a £10 note and I thought I might crumble into the ground right there.

Aziraphale talked about it all the way back to Victoria Station.

“Certainly the work of a journeyman, but so much _ personality _,” he said.

“Such use of color, why, it’s just how Crowley’s hair looked that last evening in Pompeii,” he said.

“I can’t tell if he’ll hate it or adore it, but either way I’d love to see what he thinks,” he said.

That last comment finally got its hooks in me, just as we were boarding the southbound train. “Wait,” I said. “You’re going to give that to him?”

“Yes, I think so,” Aziraphale said, glowing just a bit more than figuratively.

“As… his present? From you?”

“Oh, I know it isn’t particularly fancy, my dear. But I’ve always believed that the best gifts come from the heart.”

**Log Entry #26  
** **Date: 19 December, 2036**

FUCK

FUCK FUCK FUCK

Maybe I can steal it somehow? Swap it out with a different one? The B5 canvas is smaller and there’s no way I could make something halfway decent in six days but _ there is literally no way I can allow Crowley to see this thing_. He’ll know exactly who painted it and then I am FUCKED.

I’ve narrowed the location to either the attic or Aziraphale’s study. Neither will be easy to get into. In theory I have the run of the cottage*, but practically speaking I’d need a good reason to venture into either of those rooms. And “looking to replace/destroy Crowley’s Christmas gift” is probably not going to sound persuasive.

I tried sidling up to it by asking Aziraphale if he’d like me to do a bit of cleaning today, but he’s convinced nothing needs a good once-over at the moment, though he “appreciates the spirit.” Instead he suggested I accompany Crowley on his next trip into the village, which just seems like a recipe for 10 kinds of disaster.

*Except Crowley’s bedroom, the door to which he’s hexed with several powerful demonic wards only Aziraphale is immune to, and which he _ also _ neglected to mention to me until I tried the knob one day. (Ow.)

**Log Entry #27  
** **Date: 19 December, 2036**

_ Anonymous asked… _

_ Maybe I’m barking up the wrong tree here but what’s wrong with just letting Crowley see the painting? _

UGH OK WE REALLY NEED TO HAVE A CHAT ABOUT READING THE ARCHIVES BEFORE SENDING IN THESE ASKS, PEOPLE!!

Short version: Back when it was my job to spy on Aziraphale, drawing was usually how I documented his and Crowley’s meetings. I switched to cameras later but I never really got out of the habit of sketching. Crowley knows this about me. He’s not going to see a painting that is obviously my work, of Aziraphale _ and Crowley as an angel no less_, and not go anything less than completely spare.

This is it. My existence is over.

**Log Entry #28  
** **Date: 19 December, 2036**

_ Anonymous asked… _

_ Just calm down and think this through carefully, all right? You can get through this. Azi said to go with Crowley on an errand, yes? And you’re in South Downs? _

_ Plenty of open space down there to commit a quiet murder. _

I DON’T!!!! THINK ANY OF YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT A DEMON IS!!!!!!

Also that’d be extremely rude.

**Log Entry #29  
** **Date: 20 December, 2036**

So. The errand with Crowley today.

I wouldn’t have pegged him for the type to stomp about in the snow of his own volition, not when there was a nice heated car he could use to drive to the village. But I spose he’s been feeling cooped up.

At least it’s not _ much _ snow. We’re on the coast, after all. It’s mainly just a layer of frost that crunches under our boots as we walk.

“Have you, erm,” I tried shortly after the two mile mark. “Have you decided what you’re getting him this year?”

Crowley huffed, a thick cloud of ice crystals appearing in front of his face even through the scarf. (Aziraphale had knitted it, so it was tartan, of course.) “What, trying to write a new report on us?” he asked. “Grovel your way back into Heaven’s good graces?”

Snow, even in small quantities, has a sound dampening effect that I’ve always found intensely uncomfortable. Rotten for surveillance work, for one thing.

“Of course not,” I said. It hadn’t even occurred to me, and even if it had, there was no way it would work. Crowley was living proof of what Heaven thought about second chances. “I was just… curious, I suppose.”

“Bad habit, curiosity. Only gets you into trouble.” Crowley was living proof of that as well.

“I’ll take that as a ‘no,’ then,” I said.

Crowley growled under several layers of wool and adjusted the hamper full of biscuits and pies hanging from the crook of his elbow. “He’s difficult to shop for,” he muttered.

I smiled. It took a lot to wear Crowley down enough to be open with anyone, much less me, but the weather and this awkward stalemate with Aziraphale seemed to have done it.

“You could take him on a trip,” I suggested. “He mentioned Korea.”

“Nnn,” Crowley said. “Never works, taking your problems with you on holiday.”

Ughhhhh WHY did he have to sound so zen about it? The travel suggestion had been my best idea for keeping Crowley as far away from the painting as inhumanly possible. Absent that, I was back to either finding a way to destroy it or… somehow explaining myself and begging Crowley’s forgiveness, which seemed about as likely as a three-legged horse winning the Ascot.

“Well,” I said, “he always likes it when you bring him spirits.”

I knew the kind of look Crowley was giving me even without turning my head. “The absssolute _ pair _ on you,” he hissed. “How long?”

“Erm. Since the beginning, unless you were doing Christmas exchanges before 1951.”

“And you’ve just cataloged all this all in your head, have you?”

“That’s right.” It wasn’t a brag, I promise. I just have a good memory for these things.

“Fine,” Crowley said, taking that as a challenge. “What did I get him in 1974?”

“Spider plant,” I answered immediately. “One you planted yourself, though you didn’t tell him that. You thought he didn’t like it, but he cared for it in his flat above the bookshop for more than two decades. Only lost it finally to a spot of fungus in ‘98, and only because he was too embarrassed to phone you for advice.”

I had gotten ahead of Crowley on the path somehow and stopped, looking back. Crowley was stalled a few paces behind me, hands in his pockets, his gaze fixed on the ground.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know I had no right--”

“You’re damned right, you didn’t,” Crowley said. He pulled himself out of whatever mood he had started to fall into and pressed on ahead again, passing me and doubling his pace. The frost crunched furiously under his boot-shaped feet. “Do you know what your lot tried to do to him, when they finally put together that he wasn’t theirs anymore?”

“Execution, he said.”

“_Hellfire_. In Heaven. They got one of you, one of the ex-Grigori, to come up from the basement with a cauldron of the stuff and build a tower of infernal flame. And then they told him to walk into it.”

“Wait, told who, the Grigori or--”

_ “AZIRAPHALE!” _

In any other season, a shout like that would have bounced off the adjacent hills; startled small rodents in a half mile in all directions. But in the snow it just sounded like he was yelling it straight into my ear. I flinched.

“And you,” Crowley continued, after the static hum of silence swept in again. “You just stood by and -- watched, while he damned himself by degrees. Because it was just so entertaining for you, wasn’t it, watching a Principality Fall?”

It took ages to muster up enough air in my lungs to answer.

“He’s not damned,” I said. “And he hasn’t Fallen. I know you’re worried that he might yet, but -- but, listen, why would head office punish me if they were still planning to punish him? Maybe they cast me out because they _ couldn’t _ do anything about him.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Well, neither do you,” I reasoned. “This isn’t really why you’re angry, anyway. You’re just bothered about not making up with him yet and now you’re taking it out on other people.”

For one unguarded moment, Crowley’s eyebrows shot toward his hairline. Then he drew them together in a defensive furrow. “That your two centuries of spy work talking, is it?”

I blinked. “Wait, how long d’you think I’ve been doing this?”

“Oh, don’t even bother lying. I know you started somewhere in the 1860s. Saw you lugging around that camera in Saint James’s Park, looking like a giant git--”

Cameras. Always my bloody undoing. Of course that was the first time he spotted me; I didn’t tend to go round in corporeal form before then.

“I’ve watched you,” I burst out, “for two _ thousand _ years!”

I don’t know why I said it. I’d been getting so frustrated every time I talked to him, I guess. I didn’t expect forgiveness, certainly not from a former(ish) demon, but I just couldn’t tolerate the misunderstanding.

“I know about the oysters in Rome,” I went on, “and the dancing in Constantinople and -- and the kiss in Morocco.” I was shaking by that point, Aziraphale’s heavy wicker hamper digging into the flesh of my arm. “So… so for the love of God or_ someone_, just get him a bottle of that absinthe he likes so much and apologize already! It’s not that hard!”

For a while, Crowley didn’t move or speak. If he blinked behind his glasses -- and I don’t think he did under normal circumstances anyway -- I couldn’t see it, fogged up as they were.

The seconds dragged out. My guts twisted as though I’d put something inadvisable in them again. I wrung my hands.

“I’m sorry,” I said wretchedly. “Please just forget I said all that. You don’t -- how’s that saying go? You don’t know me from Adam, so -- Or, actually, I spose you would know, both Adams in fact, but I don’t, I don’t have any reason to even be here, so--”

Crowley said something, low and muffled under his scarf.

“Sorry?”

“I _ said_,” Crowley snarled, “what’s the brand of the absinthe he likes? You know it, don’t you?”

**Log Entry #30  
** **Date: 21 December, 2036**

_ doctorwhomst asked… _

_ Hi, American reader here, really love the concept of this whole blog! Really reminds me of the old BBC shows I used to watch as a kid 😍 _

_ Awhile back Azi said something about “He’s gotten you into watching the telly, hasn’t he?” -- Do you watch TV? What does Crowley like to watch? Besides nature shows lol _

Wow, how are you getting online? I thought everything was still under martial law over there. Be safe, American followers!

I don’t actually watch much telly, but Crowley’s been getting me into some of his favorite programs (by which I mean, he’ll watch them by the fireplace when he’s feeling cold/lazy and he won’t oust me if I sit down beside him). He’s a big fan of some old American series, actually: _ Golden Girls_, _ I Love Lucy_, _ Will & Grace_, _ Pushing Daisies_, etc. He’s fond of cartoons as well, though I honestly couldn’t tell them apart if you asked me to name them. One seems to have a lot of singing and magical beings fusing together? idk.

And yes, before you ask, I _ have _ tried to sneak into the attic while Aziraphale was out and Crowley was absorbed in his shows. No luck. Last time he heard me lowering the attic ladder, he ordered me downstairs and made me watch four entire episodes of _ Fuller House _ with him. I didn’t sign up for this cruel and unusual punishment.

**Log Entry #31  
** **Date: 25 December, 2036**

The Christmas that Crowley and Aziraphale celebrate is decidedly secular. There’s no tree, no church mass (of course), no kitsch ceramics of Father Christmas praying over an infant Jesus above the fireplace. It’s more akin to a birthday for them -- not the Son’s, since that was technically in spring, but their own, because they don’t have them and this is the nearest equivalent. The whole in-the-beginning, born-from-darkest-night, winter solstice thing.

(Personally, if I were going to pick a birthday for myself, I’d go with something in the summer months. 2 July sounds nice.)

Crowley and Aziraphale’s Christmas traditions have gotten more elaborate since they’ve started living together. There’s all the baking, obviously. And the dinner, which even Crowley takes part in. Then retiring to the den with the roaring fireplace and Fancy German Bloke on the gramophone and a bottle of Something-something-du-something, which they shared while they sat close together on a sofa they barely used and discussed what movie (!) to watch together (!!?!?!!!).

They were both two glasses in (and me halfway through my first) before the topic of presents came up.

I didn’t actually remember the name of the absinthe brand Aziraphale liked, but I _ did _ remember the design on the label. Good visual memory and all that. I’d sketched it out for Crowley on a bit of butcher paper and he took it with him to God Knows Where, returning two nights later soaked to the bone and extremely pleased with himself.

He presented it to Aziraphale tonight in a matte black box and a single green bow, and did his best to appear completely uninterested when Aziraphale gave a little shriek of surprise at the label.

“Next time,” Crowley told me, when Aziraphale rose to go to the kitchen for glasses and sugar cubes, “give me the name of a spirit that _ didn’t _ go out of production a bloody century ago.”

“Sorry,” I said, though I didn’t actually feel all that bad about it.

Aziraphale even let me try some. I’m not sure on whether the sugar was actually meant to do anything; it tasted like drinking a straight glass of menthol. They both erupted into laughter when I made a face.

Then they took pity and relieved me of my glass to finish themselves.

“M’sorry for… being a bastard,” Crowley mumbled to Aziraphale some time later, lolling bonelessly on the sofa.

Aziraphale gave him a tender smile and a clumsy pat on the back of his hand. “Oh, my love, I already forgave you weeks ago,” he said, which was true. “We’re a couple of silly old men-shaped beings, aren’t we?”

They laughed again at that. I was feeling warm from the contact high, so happy just to be watching them and drinking my consolation dessert wine that I completely forgot there was still another gift unaccounted for -- until another 20 minutes later, when Aziraphale produced a brightly wrapped oblong from behind the sofa.

“Sss’obviously a book,” Crowley said, as he started picking at a corner of the wrapping paper. I started gauging the distance from my seat to the front door and from there to the garden shed. “You know how I feel about those, ‘Ziraphale.”

“That you love them, but you’re a compulsive liar?” Aziraphale suggested fondly.

“Ngh.” Crowley succeeded at peeling back a stripe of the paper. He had removed his glasses at that point -- first time I’d seen him without them since I’d come to stay here -- and I watched his expression contort in real time. First to confusion, then pained discomfort, and finally, a fragile helplessness.

“I wasn’t sure if you’d like it, old boy,” Aziraphale said beside him, leaning over to view the exposed triangle of canvas with him. Their shoulders pressed together. “I know I was taking a chance. If it’s not to your tastes, I can always get you something else.”

Wordlessly, Crowley pulled off the rest of the wrapping paper and held the canvas at arm’s length. Aziraphale hadn’t framed it. I could see my own chaotic handwriting on the back, the pretentious name I’d tried to give it, something to do with stardust.

“You didn’t,” Crowley managed, pushing the words out as though through a fine mesh, “have to ask them to make something…”

“Oh, it’s not custom, I’m afraid,” Aziraphale said, oblivious. I’d never felt so grateful for the ambiguity of English pronouns. “Suppose it’s the result of some errant bolt of divine inspiration. Someone must have seen us together when we were in London. I found it quite by chance while out with Rezathaniel last week--”

“Angel.”

Crowley turned and held Aziraphale’s gaze. Then, as natural as if they’d been doing it for centuries, he took his hand in his own. A pink flush, unrelated to the drink, spread over their respective cheeks, going as far as the tips of Crowley’s ears.

I promptly fell out of my chair.

Above me, both Crowley and Aziraphale burst out laughing.

“Poor dear,” Aziraphale said between heaving giggles. He and Crowley staggered more or less to their feet, glasses and painting forgotten so they could help me upright. “Can’t hold their alcohol one little bit, can they?”

“Tiny baby,” Crowley agreed. “Our fault for indulging ‘em.”

“I’m the same age as you!” I protested, embarrassed but mostly just furious with myself. It’s not like I could yell at them to stop touching me and go back to touching each other.

“Only on account of time not existin’ before Then,” Crowley said. “Me, m’older than either of you, if we’re includin’ pre-time.”

“You can’t _ count pre-time_,” Aziraphale insisted, with a furrow of his brow that hoped Crowley would concede the point before he was forced to explain it. “That’s not how it _ works_.”

“Wha’ever. Fact is, I’ve seniority over you angels.”

“You’ve no such thing, you silly old serpent.”

Somehow, it ended up with all three of us on the sofa, me wedged between the two of them like a disobedient schoolchild whose parents had gotten called down to the headmaster’s office. Crowley sprawled out like a sea creature again, slithering an arm over the back of the couch behind my head as he willed the television on.

“So what’re we feelin’ like?” he asked the room at large. “_Jesus Christ, Superstar _ or _ The Exorcissst_?”

Aziraphale tutted. “_Jesus Christ, Superstar _ is an Easter movie, darling.”

“Pea soup it is.”

I dunno if I’m very, very lucky or just incredibly cursed.


	3. Mailbag #1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rezathaniel, angel of bin-diving, takes time out of the winter holidays to answer a few questions from readers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all your lovely comments and reader questions! This is a short update just to let you all know I'm on a bit of a writing hiatus at the moment. You can always find me on Twitter [@robotdere](https://twitter.com/robotdere).
> 
> Special thanks to [Ponderosa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ponderosa121/) for letting me borrow Flauros the Demon Furry.

**Log Entry #32  
** **Date: 26 December, 2036**

Definitely cursed.

Maybe I’m still in Hell, maybe they just sorted me with the human souls after all and

OK no from what Crowley says Hell is not actually that creative when it comes to tormenting. Get him drunk enough and he’ll tell you about the time where they  _ tried _ to do the whole immersive slow burn insanity torture thing, but it was such a disaster it resulted in four human souls  _ and _ the demon architect fleeing topside. After that, management decided “never again” and apparently it’s been nothing but two-mouthed bears and bees with teeth ever since.

**Log Entry #33  
** **Date: 28 December, 2036**

_ roguebowtie asked… _

_ It looks like Mr. C recognized your work, did he ever get around to finding out if Mr. A knew you did it? Please tell me it is framed and up on an empty bit of wall! How does if feel, now it looks like they basically adopted you? Are you as uber-chuffed as I imagine from seeing what you write? Have a yay day! _

UGH OK SO. Crowley not only insisting on keeping the painting I made of him and Aziraphale but he did indeed frame it and then hung it up IN HIS BEDROOM. Or so Aziraphale tells me. Crowley would probably sooner chop off a limb than let me see his ~inner sanctum~

(Related: guess where Aziraphale goes on those nights when he feels like a lie-down. I don’t know why I hadn’t put 2 and 2 together before now.)

So yeah somehow didn’t get murdered for this one but now he’s just hanging onto it for, revenge reasons maybe? Idk. 

Re: adopted: Am I??? How do you tell with that sort of thing?

**Log Entry #34  
** **Date: 2 January, 2037**

_ airel asked… _

_ have you gotten to do any painting yet since you got back from your London trip? _

I have… sort of. I was thinking of spending some more time practicing before diving back into paints, what with only having the one B5 canvas and no ability to acquire any more, but I got this interesting commission for someone's fursona that I thought would be a fun challenge, so I took it. Only, er, it's turned into more of a thing than I expected. <strike>Especially for what she's paying me.</strike>

Just out of curiosity for any fellow artists reading this: How many revisions is too many? Does a full color portrait REALLY mean the flames need to move and burn on contact? What do you do when your client wants you to paint in four dimensions when she's only paid for two? Asking for a friend.

_ Shakari asked…  _

_ Rezathaniel, have you tried sushi? I've not had in in a while because I don't like fish. but if I remember correctly, it was kinda slimy so it might be something you'd enjoy. _

OOOooOOOOooo, is it really? I’ve only ever watched Aziraphale eating it from a distance so I never really got a sense of what the texture was like. I’ll ask him if he can make it sometime, thanks!

**Log Entry #35  
** **Date: 12 January, 2037**

_ Wren Truesong asked… _

_ Reza, love, is it okay to call you that? I'm glad you seem to be doing better. And that Crowley didn't mangle you after all, but it being an Aziraphale present probably helped. As for an excuse to start panting again, is there like a community center or programs in that village? Arts stuff is generally an offering and you could get some advantage out of people reading you as young. Aziraphale will be delighted you're Developing Hobbies and you might get some ideas for changing your art style. _

_ Or you could let Aziraphale assume you're imitating. XD _

_ Ofc we're all madly invested in the Spouses and their journey to such momentous events as Holding Hands(!), but how are you adjusting to this humaning lark? 36 years and I'm still only so good at it. _

Whoa, you wrote a whole letter! :O Thank you so much!

I’ll try taking your questions in order if that’s OK… 

“Reza”: Yeah, that’s fine! Some of my human mates call me that anyway. Never understood what was so hard about either my or Aziraphale’s names that humans keep wanting to shorten them, but I think “Reza” sounds macho so have at.

Community center: You know, there might be? I should look into that! The village is practically all closed up at the mo apart from the general store and the pub (and the church, of course), but once the spring thaw hits I expect there’ll be loads more to do whilst out and about. :|a

Letting Aziraphale know about my art: To be honest, copying is the easy bit. Loads of Grigori have perfect visual recall -- it’s part of why we’re called Watchers -- it’s the inventing stuff from imagination that might get him asking questions. Cos I mean, that’s not a thing you develop overnight, as a supernatural being. Most of us don’t manage it at all.  _ But _ if there’s an arts program I can go to in the village, like you say, that might be plausible enough explanation to convince Aziraphale!

Humaning: You’ve been at it longer than me! Until 2008 I spent most of my time non-corporeal, so it’s really only been the last 29 years or so I’ve done a lot of sustained human living. 

Personally I don’t mind most of it? Your GI tracts really ought to be made of sterner stuff, though! Sharks can go round eating license plates and rubber tires like it’s any old thing but I eat one (1) safety pin and it’s like “you’ve torn up your esophagus, Reza,” “we’re taking you to hospital, Reza,” “you’ve got pica, Reza.” So annoying.

**Author's Note:**

> **FAQ:**
> 
> **Q: Hey, you can't just blog about people's lives without their permission!**  
**A:** I mean, we're talking about a pair of immortal supernatural entities who have influenced the course of human events for 6,000 years. That KIND of makes them public figures, in my eyes. But also let's say I changed names and locations etc etc etc -- would that satisfy you?
> 
> **Q: How come Aziraphale and Crowley seem way more powerful than you? Aren't you all from the same original stock?**  
**A:** Not really. Very hierarchical place, Heaven. Aziraphale is a Principality and I don't know what Crowley used to be (I'm sure he'd incinerate me for even asking) but it was probably something higher ranking than that. But me, I'm a Grigori. We're the lowest order of angels; we exist mainly to observe human events. TBH I think the Almighty wouldn't even have bothered to make us if She'd had the foresight to invent CCTVs... but don't tell Her I said that.
> 
> **Q: What happened to you?**  
**A:** I'm like the least interesting part of this story but if you really want to know, I cover it a bit [over here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20155537).
> 
> **Q: Please stop eating out of bins.**  
**A:** Stop putting tasty things in bins, then.
> 
> **Q: Speaking OOCly, who writes you?**  
**A:** Their name is Kris and you can find them on Twitter [here!](https://twitter.com/robotdere)


End file.
